In the past, coin hoppers have been used for numerous applications. For example, coin dispensers are frequently used in vending machines and are necessary because vending machine sales are made without a human cashier to make change. Providing a coin dispenser eliminates the requirement that a person have exact change in order to make a purchase from the vending machine. Coin dispensers can comprise a plurality of stacked tubes with each tube having a different denomination of coin. A vending machine calculates the required change by determining the amount of money inserted by the customer and subtracting the product price. The vending machine can then activate payout from coin tubes containing known coin denominations.
More recently, department stores and grocery stores have moved toward replacing human cashiers with self-checkout kiosks where a customer can tally the cost for items the customer wishes to buy for himself. Typically, the customer does this by moving the Universal Product Code bar codes over a laser scanner, which reads the codes. The customer is then presented with several methods to pay for the items, including cash. Typically, the kiosk will accept both paper currency and coins as payment. However, because the customer may not have exact change to make the purchase, the kiosk must be able to pay out change in at least coins, or perhaps paper currency as well, to provide change to the customer. However, due to the large quantity of change that must be paid out compared to product vending machines and the greater number of customers typically served, prior art coin dispensers lack a sufficient quantity of stored coins and/or the payout speed required of this higher volume application.
As a result, there is a need in the art for a coin dispenser that can hold a greater quantity of coins for payout in multiple denominations and pay out the required change at a high rate. However, in such self-checkout kiosks only a limited amount of space is dedicated for use by a coin dispenser to accomplish this goal. Therefore, the coin dispenser is preferable small and fits within the allowable footprint.